I got swamped with work and travel for work and then the long holiday and basically ignored this blog and the ongoing rewrite project. So, finally, here's the next installment:
The Great Chain of Being
The Great Chain of Being is the first of several concepts we need to explore before beginning an analysis of the different aspects of our world. It is a concept that helps give us a perspective on our relationship to, and place in, the Kosmos.
Vast Chain of Being! Which God began
Nature ethereal, human angel, man
Beast, Bird, Fish, Insect, what no eye can see,
No glass can reach; from Infinite to thee,
From thee to nothing. On superior pow’rs
Were we to pray, inferior might on ours;
Or in the full creation leave a void,
Where, one step broken, the great scale’s destroy’d
From Nature’s chain whatever link you strike,
Tenth or ten thousandth, breaks the chain alike.
-Alexander Pope
The Great Chain of Being: Matter giving rise to life, giving rise to mind, giving rise to soul, becoming aware of Spirit, the very essence of the chain itself. The Great Chain of Being pops up in one form or another throughout the world’s religions and philosophies. It isn’t a difficult concept to grasp. And it is not surprising that such a simple and elegant hierarchy has been frequently mutated and perverted to place one person above the rest, males above females, or one ethnicity above another. This pathological representation of the Great Chain should not be used as an excuse to discard it all together. Not only is it a valid view of the universe, but one that we can use in viewing our own relationship with it.
By seeing our place in the universe we gain respect for, and appreciate the place of, all other things. This to some extent probably explains the frequency with which the Great Chain appears in the various wisdom traditions. Philosopher and historian of religion, Huston Smith, noted as much when describing the universality of the Great Chain of Being. “When we combine (a) the fact that it has been the subtler minds which, when not thrown off balance by the first blush of the scientific breakthrough, have gravitated to the hierarchical view, with (b) the further fact that, from the multiple heavens of Judaism to the storied structure of the Hindu temple and the angelologies of innumerable traditions, the view was reached convergently and independently, as if by innate tropism, by virtually all known societies; when, to repeat, we combine these two facts and bring them into alignment, they entitle us to regard a tiered reality as man’s central surmise when the full range of his experience is legitimized and pondered profoundly.”
The most thorough study of the Great Chain of Being was written by philosopher Arthur Lovejoy. Referring to Lovejoy’s book, The Great Chain of Being, integral philosopher Ken Wilber notes that:
… the various Great Chain Theorists maintained three essential points: (1) all phenomenon – all things and events, people, animals, minerals, plants—are manifestations of the superabundance and plenitude of Spirit, so that Spirit is woven intrinsically into each and all, and thus even the entire material and natural world was, as Plato put it, “a visible, sensible God”; (2) therefore, there are “no gaps” in nature, no missing links, no unbridgeable dualisms, for each and everything is interwoven with each and every other (the “continuum of being”); and (3) the continuum of being nevertheless shows gradation, for various emergents appear in some dimensions that do not appear in others (e.g., wolves can run, rocks can’t, so there are “gaps” in the special sense of emergents).
Each thing, each atom, each life, each mind, is whole within itself, while at the same time part of a greater whole. This Great Chain of Being fills the entire universe top to bottom. This universe of infinite connection and infinite depth is the one that is around us and within us at every moment. Our awareness of it is in many ways our awareness of our own being. And more importantly, our awareness of our being in relation to all being. For instance, we might not have much feeling for the matter that comprises life, the seemingly unimportant molecules and atoms that create our Kosmos, but without them, there would be no life. And without life, there would be no mind. There would always be, as there always has been, Spirit, the Ground of All Being, but without mind, there would be no awareness of it.
Our place in the Great Chain of Being is both exalted, and tenuous. We are the fortunate ones, those possessing minds, capable of realizing the true nature of the universe, but at the same time the world of life, and a universe of matter, support us. If the sun should wink out, all life on this planet would disappear with it. In the same way, if we do not respect the life that supports us on this planet, we will threaten the very foundation that maintains and provides for our minds. And further, if we do not care for and cultivate our minds, we will never grow to fully appreciate the real nature of the universe as Spirit, the Ground of All Being, manifest in every link of the Great Chain.
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